[alterom]

>I'm surprised you want to run real CAD software on a netbook. I think your use case is pretty unusual.

CAD has been around since before IBM PC came out. It's not necessarily a demanding piece of software.

Still, scratch CAD. My favorite VST synths are Windows-based.

And I don't want to lug around extra kilograms just to make some noise.

[Groxx]

tbh audio might be the hardest fit here - low-channel sound cards on low-end devices is pretty common, last I looked, and it tends to be CPU-heavy (and these tend to use very weak CPUs). you'd probably be fine rendering it out and checking the result (slow but afaik not usually memory heavy), but it may struggle with scrubbing around.

hard to say without actually trying it tho. and depends on the device, of course - mine was like $250 when new, it's a very different beast than a $1,000+ chromebook. the higher-end ones are much closer to normal laptops.

[alterom]

Let's say, digital audio production and digital synths running on commodity PCs was a thing since the 1980s.

I'm OK with having computational limitations that musicmakers had in 2000s. Heck, some of my favorite softsynths are from that time (Superwave P8, 4Front and other romplers, Dexed, etc).

The weak CPUs today handle them without a problem.

Hell, I've produced plenty of music on Intel Atom-powered Asus Eee1000 netbook back in what was it, 2008-2010, and I'm still using the very same software.

>low-channel sound cards

What do you even mean by this?

In any case, a USB audio adapter that solves all the audio issues costs $20 these days.